Of Sheepdom

I'm not generally the swearing type, but I think I could come up with a few choice words for old Ben Franklin right about now. As the originator of the idea of Daylight Saving Time (and thus directly responsible for my late rising and rushing out the door to church this morning), I'd sure like to give him a piece of my mind.

Eh-hem.

As far as I'm concerned, Daylight Saving Time is only an exercise in the Sheepness of the Masses. "Hey, let's see if we can get people to follow this absurd idea!"

Baaaa.

And now that we spend 8 months on DST and only 4 months off, why not just change the clocks permanently and save us all the agony of the adjustment?

The idea that it saves energy usage just seems silly to me. It doesn't actually buy us an extra hour of sun, it only shifts it from morning to evening, according to the clocks. So if we have extra sun in the evening, we get that darkness in the morning and turn on all our lights anyway. I've even heard the observation that people use more air conditioning during the summer because the sun goes down later by our clocks, as in this article:

The concept was first put forward by Benjamin Franklin, as a satire, during a visit to Paris. He wrote that fewer candles would be used if people got up earlier and went to bed earlier.

The city's engineer for energy services says moving the clock forward, even starting the shift earlier, seems to merely shift energy use to different times.

"At the end, all I could say was that we were shifting it around," John Phelan told The Coloradoan. Studies were "very inconclusive."

A study by the University of California-Santa Barbara, found that daylight savings increases energy use. It was based on a study of households in Indiana. An earlier study of energy in Australia came to similar conclusions.

Say... Did that say that Franklin's original idea was only a satire? Be careful what you say, dude, sheep are dumb and may not quite take your meaning.

Hmmm... On those lines, I propose that instead of changing the clocks, we turn off the TV for the summer and go outside. That would save a little energy.